Showing 6356 results

George Thomas Staunton was born at Milford House near Salisbury. When 12 years old he accompanied his father on Macartney's mission to China. He had begun to learn Chinese prior to the mission and as such was able to converse in Chinese. In 1798 he was appointed a writer in the British East India Company's factory at Canton, and subsequently its chief. In 1805 he translated a work of Dr George Pearson into Chinese. Five years later, he published an English translation of a significant part of the Chinese legal code.

In 1816 Staunton acted as second commissioner on a special mission to Beijing with Lord Amherst and Sir Henry Ellis but the embassy was unsuccessful and shortly after it departed back to Britain Staunton decided to leave China permanently. In 1820 he purchased the Leigh estate in Hampshire. He was a founder member of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Marc Aurel Stein was born in Budapest in 1862. He first studied Sanskrit with Roth and Geldner in Tübingen and subsequently came to London in 1883 to continue his study of oriental languages. He went as Registrar to Lahore University in 1887 and became Principal of the Oriental College in 1888. He was interested in Central Asia both in its geography, archaeology and strategic position. Stein is renowned for his archaeological exploration in Eastern Central Asia (1900-01, 1906-08, 1913-16, 1930-31), India, Iran, Iraq and Jordan, and for his pioneering work on the early civilizations of the Silk Road. He is especially famous for the discovery of the hidden library of documents and Buddhist paintings at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas (Qianfodong) at Dunhuang, Gansu province, China.
He became a British national in 1904. Stein received a number of honours throughout his career. This Collection reveals some of them. He was conferred with the Gold Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1943. Stein wrote extensively about his travels and within the RAS Collections are original photographs from which the plates were taken for his many publications. Stein died in Kabul on 26 October 1943 and is buried in Kabul's British Cemetery.

John Massey Stewart is a photographer, writer, lecturer, and environmental activist with a special interest in Russia and the Russian far East. This collection primarily documents his visit to Mongolia in 1964 as part of a visiting British delegation before the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

The Syro-Egyptian Society was founded on Tuesday 3 December 1844, the inaugural meeting taking place at the Society's Rooms, No. 71 Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square, London. Dr. John Lee was in the Chair and the meeting was attended by a 'very numerous company of Ladies and Gentlemen distinguished by their rank in Society, and by their attainments; including various celebrated Authors and Oriental Travellers...'. The Society was founded 'to bring together those who had travelled in, and directed their attention to the Antiquities and general History of Egypt, Nubia, Abyssinia, Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor'. It seems that a Council had already been formed before this meeting to oversee the Society whose originator was Dr. W. Holt Yates.

Major Maurice Patrick O'Connor Tandy (1912-86) Tandy had a career spanning the Royal Artillery, the North-West Frontier Province of India, and colonial administration in the Persian Gulf, where he was Political Officer, Trucial Coast, and later Political Agent, Kuwait. His posts and dates include: Vice-Consul Zabul 1939-40, Assistant Commissioner Kohat 1940-41, Vice-Consul Bushire 1941, Political Officer Trucial Coast 1943-44, Assistant Political Agent Bahrain 1944-45, Political Agent Kuwait 1945-48.